Political Potentials, Deep-Seated Nativism and the Success of the German AfD

The German populist radical right party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) was founded amid various economic and political crises. This article argues that the electoral success of this political challenger, however, is rooted in more than the upsurge of populist resentments born out of these crises. Integrating theories about the activation of attitudes with arguments about the effects of exposure to local political contexts, I contend that the electoral success of the AfD reflects the mobilization of deep-seated nativist sentiments. To test these propositions, I draw on a large panel dataset of the AfD’s electoral returns at the municipal level (N = 10,694) which I link to pre-crises data on the marginal success of extreme-right parties. Exploiting variation between municipalities located within the same county (N = 294), I estimate a series of spatial simultaneous autoregressive error models by maximum likelihood estimation. The results show that the success of the AfD is rooted in the local prevalence of nativist sentiments that date prior to the crises that fomented the formation of the challenger party–an effect that becomes stronger in the course of the radicalization of the AfD. I further demonstrate that the populist right AfD is best able to broaden its electoral appeal among local communities with an extreme-right sub-culture, particularly in Eastern Germany. This suggests that even small extreme-right networks can act as a breeding ground for the populist right and help spread xenophobic and nativist sentiments among citizens

Electoral participation, political disaffection, and the rise of the populist radical right

Does the populist radical right benefit from increased electoral mobilization? Integrating theories of political grievances with accounts of party competition in Western Europe, we contend that the populist right gains advantage from increased electoral mobilization, but that this effect is conditional on political disaffection. We draw on a novel panel dataset (2009-2019) of more than 10,000 German municipalities and city districts to study the implications of turnout surges as a function of pre-existing levels of political disaffection in a difference-in-differences design. The results demonstrate that turnout surges benefit the populist right "Alternative fur Deutschland" (AfD) in contexts of widespread political distrust. In contrast, increased mobilization acts to depress its electoral fortunes in communities marked by low baseline levels of political disaffection. In shedding light on the interplay between political disaffection and electoral mobilization, this study has important implications for understanding the surge of the populist right in established democracies

Representation and accountability

Representative democracy in Europe depends on the capacity of parties to offer political alternatives, integrate the demands of voters into their platforms and responsibly translate them into policies when elected into office. Elections, thus, are the key element in the representative model that offer voters the chance to both articulate by whom they would like to be represented and to hold elected officials accountable via the threat to revoke this authorization (Pitkin, 1967). In recent decades, this model of representative democracy has come under substantial pressure. Long-term processes of social change related to cultural liberalism and globalization have transformed the policy concerns of the electorate (Kriesi, 2016). The established parties previously engaged in representing the interests of a majority of citizens along the traditional left-right dimension of political conflict, however, had difficulties to respond to these changing demands of voters. Since the 2000s, established parties found themselves increasingly challenged by new political actors including populist radical right and radical left parties, Green parties, and “valence populist” parties (Zulianello, 2020) in Eastern Europe. The rise of these new challenger parties, is not only an expression of the declining representative capacity of mainstream parties. It is also intrinsically connected to the different economic and political crises that Europe has been witnessing over the last 20 years (Kriesi and Pappas, 2015; Hutter and Kriesi, 2019). The new political actors across Europe have in common that they call into question the sustained capability of mainstream parties to represent the interests and preferences of European citizens. While mainstream parties mostly emphasize issues related to the economic dimension of political conflict, challenger parties tend to run on political platforms that emphasize issues related to the policy challenges arising from an increasingly globalized world and interconnected European Union. In doing so, some of the challenger parties also adopt a decisively anti-system or populist strategy of appealing to voters (Hopkin, 2020). This chapter examines how political representation and accountability across Europe has been affected by the changes that European party systems have been witnessing over the last decades. It sheds light on the drivers of these changes and the resulting implications for the representation of citizens’ political preferences. The chapter has six sections. The first discusses the most important long-term processes of social change that have shaped European societies and politics over the past decades. The next four sections show how these processes found their reflection in transforming political space in Europe. Not only did they contribute to the electoral decline of mainstream parties who previously used to represent the interests of a large majority of the electorate along the traditional left-right dimension of political conflict. Coupled with the consequences of multi-level competition in the European Union, they also gave rise to the success of new challenger parties. These challenger parties represent both the new substantive demands of citizens that map on a new, cultural cleavage of political competition. Many of them also articulate voters’ political distrust towards the mainstream political elite. Finally, this chapter shows that challenger parties across Europe have increasingly participated in government, allowing them to represent voters’ new demands in cabinet

Measuring the diversity of each party's candidates in the German election

Opinion polls suggest six parties will enter the Bundestag in Germany's election on Sunday, two more than crossed the electoral threshold in the last elections in 2013. But what does this apparent fragmentation of the German party system mean for the diversity of candidates, particularly in terms of the fair representation of women and minority groups? Paul C. Bauer and Julia Schulte-Cloos present a detailed analysis of the numbers of women and foreign-born candidates on each party’s candidate list. They find that parties on the left/libertarian end of the scale are more inclusive of women, but that the left-wing Die Linke and right-wing AfD have the highest percentage of foreign-born candidates

Has immigration really led to an increase in crime in Italy?

Immigration has been a key topic in Italy's election campaign, with several candidates arguing that the flow of people into the country during the migration crisis has increased the risk of crime. But has immigration really generated more crime in Italy? Drawing on data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics, Donato Di Carlo, Julia Schulte-Cloos and Giulia Saudelli illustrate that crime rates across Italian regions and the share of crimes committed by foreigners have both fallen significantly over the last decade

COVID-19-related anxieties do not decrease support for liberal democracy

Published online: 19 September 2022The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread fear among the population. Early studies suggested that this resulted in exclusionary attitudes and increased support for discriminatory policy measures. We still lack an understanding of the longer-term, potentially erosive consequences that COVID-19-specific anxieties may carry for citizens' commitment to liberal democratic norms. In this research note, we present evidence from an original experiment in which we manipulate individuals' cognitive accessibility of their fears related to COVID-19. We implemented this experiment in Hungary and Romania – two cases where illiberal attitudes are most likely to amplify under conditions of fear – a year and a half after the outbreak of the pandemic. The results show that our intervention is successful in elevating respondents' levels of worry, anxiety and fear when thinking about infectious diseases like COVID-19. However, these emotions do not carry secondary effects on individuals' levels of right-wing authoritarianism, nationalism or outgroup hostility, nor do they affect preferences for specific discriminatory policy measures aimed to fight a potential resurgence of COVID-19. We discuss these findings in light of the literature on the demand-side determinants of democratic backsliding and the consequences of emotions on political behaviour.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Wiley Transformative Agreement (2020-2023

Shared identity in crisis: a comparative study of support for the EU in the face of the Russian threat

Social identity theory suggests that an external threat, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, can increase identification with a group and foster a shared sense of identity. While initial research has shown that the shock of Russian aggression positively affects support for the European Union (EU) among European citizens on average, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how variation in threat perceptions relates to identity-based support for the EU. Using survey data from 16 countries collected just five weeks after the invasion, we show an increase in identity-related EU support among those most concerned about the Russian threat. By applying machine learning techniques and a causal forest algorithm, we further reveal the heterogeneity of this relationship. Individuals with an exclusive national identity, who otherwise express little sense of pride in belonging to the EU, register a much larger increase in European identification in response to the Russian threat. Notably, this effect is particularly pronounced among respondents from Central and Eastern Europe. By highlighting that even individuals with an exclusive national identity can be swayed to feel attached to the EU in times of crisis, our study contributes to understanding the complex nature of identity-based support for the EU.This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 885026)

COVID-19 related anxieties do not decrease support for liberal democracy

Published online: 10 November 2021Studies carried out at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic confirmed that under the impression of fear individuals were more willing to tolerate violations of liberal-democratic norms and supported discriminatory policies to preserve public safety. But what are the potential consequences of the pandemic on citizens’ attitudes beyond its peak? We conducted an original experiment in which we manipulate individuals’ cognitive accessibility of their fears related to COVID-19 one and a half years after the onset of the pandemic. We fielded the experiment in Hungary and Romania–two cases most likely to see such attitudes amplify under the condition of fear. Our intervention was successful in elevating respondents’ levels of worry, anxiety, and fear when thinking about infectious diseases like COVID-19. However, these emotions did not affect individuals’ levels of rightwing authoritarianism, nationalism, or outgroup hostility, or their preferences for specific discriminatory policies aimed to fight a potential resurgence of COVID-19

The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative: Investigating Immigration and Social Policy Preferences. Executive Report.

In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of selective model reporting and lack of replicability. The heterogeneity of countries obscures attempts to clearly define data-generating models. P-hacking and HARKing lurk among standard research practices in this area.This project employs crowdsourcing to address these issues. It draws on replication, deliberation, meta-analysis and harnessing the power of many minds at once. The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative carries two main goals, (a) to better investigate the linkage between immigration and social policy preferences across countries, and (b) to develop crowdsourcing as a social science method. The Executive Report provides short reviews of the area of social policy preferences and immigration, and the methods and impetus behind crowdsourcing plus a description of the entire project. Three main areas of findings will appear in three papers, that are registered as PAPs or in process